How I Met My Husband #SummerLove16

Back in July, on my ‘A Summer of Love’ poem, I launched a summer-long series of posts called ‘The Summer of Love’ and I now have a number of people who have come forward. If you would like to join them then please email me – vickywelton@hotmail.com – and I would love to have you on board. The love can be about your partner, husband or wife, the love for your children, your pets, your hobbies and, well, anything really! It can be a straight piece of writing or in poetry or photograph form. There is no specific day or time that I will be posting them as I would like to make it easy over the holidays but the series will run from now until the beginning of September. I will include links to your blog and social media channels.

My name is Jules and I blog over at PonderingParenthood.com. This is the story of how I met my lovely hubby.

Hubby and I actually met at a job interview. At the time, we were both fairly new to primary teaching; I was just coming to the end of my second year in the profession, and hubby was a Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT).

Fortunately for us, the head teacher of that school liked to take a chance on stupidly ambitious young teachers as we had both applied for a job that was really for a bit later in our careers; mathematics subject leader and class teacher.

In fact I suspect made a terrible first impression as I ‘helpfully’ told future hubby about a job at another school I thought he should apply for, as they were looking for an NQT! In retrospect I realise how arrogant that must have sounded, but I was genuinely trying to be nice (and had mentally eliminated him from the process as I was sure he wouldn’t get the job due to lack of experience).

I don’t know how much you know about teaching interviews, but they usually consist of several parts across the course of a day. For this one there was a teaching element, where you teach a short sample lesson (this one was 25 minutes), an interview with the children on the School Council and a panel interview with the head teacher, a governor and one or two other key members of staff.

Because all candidates have to complete all elements, there’s usually a fair degree of ‘down time’ between each section. It just so happened that future hubby’s and my down time corresponded and we found ourselves making idle chitchat in the staff room.

I’ve got no idea what we talked about (other than me suggesting he apply for another job, ha ha!) but I do remember that the conversation flowed easily and hubby tells me that there must have been something there as he remembers having dinner with his parents that night and telling them about the nice girl he chatted to at his interview.

At the time, we were both in unhappy relationships with other people, but neither of us were looking for anyone else. It’s funny how the universe aligned for us as, despite applying for the same job, we were both employed by the school (I got the job; hubby was given an additional one, suited to his NQT status!).

As we were both new together, we spent a lot of time chatting to each other and sharing tips on where to find resources around the school. In my typically helpful/pushy way, I gave future hubby plenty of advice on how to improve his classroom (he’s never been one for pretty displays) and a friendship developed.

Over time conversation turned to our personal lives and we shared our relationship woes as things were clearly not all rosy on that front. I was in a long-term relationship, which was not good at all for my mental health. You know, one of those ones where you know you’re unhappy but don’t think anyone else will want you? I can’t explain it, but I think I could see that there was the hint of a possibility of something with future hubby. This gave me the strength to leave my horrid relationship.

Anyway, by the end of that first term working together, we were both single, although this only lasted until the end of the Christmas break, by which time we had got together. We were so professional that our work colleagues didn’t guess we were a couple until the following September when we both said we’d visited the same country during the summer holidays!

Six years on from that interview, we’ve just celebrated our first wedding anniversary and have a beautiful ten-week-old daughter. I don’t think either of us could have imagined then how life would turn out but we couldn’t be happier.